From where I fly, the dark country fills the world.
All is cracked and barren, a sea of packed dust spanning all horizons under an ashen sky. Dark grey and lifeless brown wherever my eye roams, pockmarked with dry gulches and ridged with hills in places, unyieldingly flat most others. Wild wind cuts across it, swirling up black clouds of the dust to shroud the land, to clot the air and obscure even my sunlight. Nothing lives here. Little could.
It darkens as I fly on. A great shadow at my tail swallows it up.
How this land died, I’ve little idea. Ponykind expands still into the Far West of Equestria, into a land whose history and mysteries even I can only shrug helplessly at. Maybe a wyld storm, seething with unbound magic, stole the water here before drifting off across the sea. Perhaps war was waged here between mage-lords in ages past and laid waste to it. Perhaps the weather patterns simply changed and left it barren. I’ve pondered the question over tea and brandy and reports detailing our arcane scrutiny, and remain none the wiser.
My response would remain the same. I fly with a storm in tow, a burlap sack over my withers, a little padded box in my saddlebags, a packed lunch, and resolve in my heart. And when all those are welded to an alicorn’s might, those tend — especially the storm and the lunch, speaking from experience — to be enough to overcome most difficulties.
There is a whisper.
Must you always distract yourself, Celestia?
To say nothing of a flame in the soul. She does like to mutter during the quiet moments. Daybreaker, say what you will about her — and I guarantee I have said it already, especially those sayings unfit for print — perseveres.
I persevere right back at her.
“Yes,” I reply, and fly on.
This momentarily flummoxes. When in doubt, be straightforward. Even demons of the psyche rarely expect it. Especially demons of the psyche, for that matter.
A world in dire need of you, Daybreaker whispers as I fly on, looking for a suitable spot to alight. One flat spot would do the job as well as any other, I suppose. A whole world screaming for help, for its weakness and wretchedness to be put to the flame, and you do little but —
“There should do,” I interject, and flap down towards the there in question.
What?
“I’m distracting myself, you know that,” I reply, and alight, my hooves raising a cloud of black dust as they crash into the ground. It chokes to breathe it in; it eddies around my hooves and golden shoes, clinging to my hide and the metal.
Just dust. What sort of princess is afraid to get her hooves dirty when it matters?
I give the dust time to settle and turn slowly in place, taking in the lay of the land. My wings spread, all but without bidding, and overhead, I feel the sonorous roll of the storm I’ve borne here.
It drifts in across the high skies, its black towers crowding out whatever sunlight had struggled down to the ground, its distant masses grumbling with thunder, swollen with water. The very air seems charged, threatens to erupt. I flex the ends of my wings, seeking the uttermost of the storm’s energies, willing them to my command, not yet, not yet. And it subsides, nursing its wrath.
I’d drink from my thermos, but I’ve not earned my break yet. And the dark country still awaits. Around, it gets darker yet as my storm rolls over and shrouds the world, blacking out my sun altogether. Two months of continuous effort from two different weather factories and a dozen different weather teams. I’ve seldom seen better.
You focus on this one corner, Daybreaker hisses. This least of spaces, beyond your realm and beyond your cares. Beyond what you know truly needs your attention. A world which needs you as its lit torch, the bringer of Harmony by hook or by crook. When you owe all the world the fire, what will this one little stretch accomplish?
I study the ground for a moment, just a moment. Building dramatic tension, you know. I have my guilty pleasures. And then I reply, “New acreage of farmland. Space and livelihoods for many ponies. Ground from which to spread out into more of the West. Food and homes and hope, to summarise. Life, to really summarise.” I spread my wings wide. “Ah, beg pardon. You were being rhetorical.”
My wings come together with a thunderclap. It echoes in the land around, sending the dry dust to swirling, and it echoes in the black mass of clouds above. It ripples through them, an expanding corona of noise, till it becomes a growl on the horizons.
And, after a few moments, down the raindrops come too. A few at first, then in their hundreds, then in their countless multitudes, their downfall radiating out from where I stand. Drops patter down among the dust, leaping up black with residue, cascading down and down till they form pools underhoof. I summon a bubble around myself to keep the rain off, as an afterthought.
The water comes down, slowly percolating down through the dust, clinging and clumping and slurrying it to mud. And I pull the burlap sack off my withers and draw it open.
Inside it, seeds glitter at me, enough to concuss a dragon if I swung the sack hard enough. Most from my own gardens, some from the farmers and gardeners of Equestria. Some of them are more up to date with the reckoning of these things than I, after all, and I have taken their advice.
My horn glows, grasping hundreds of seeds at a time, and I begin my sowing. The first are cast out in a wide circle around me, sinking below the surface of the slurried pools of dust without a trace. The next wider than that, and so on. I save some of the heavier seeds for later. The acorns and nuts can wait till the little ones are established.
Think of the good you could be doing elsewhere, Daybreaker purrs. This is a task your ponies could attend to equally well, with more time. Such is their use. But you have another. In other realms, beings suffer, and you could fix that. Harmony wherever the sun rises and sets. Peace at the end of a lance, wherever your gaze may fall. Darkness left with no room to hide and harried out into the light. She wheedles. Who else but you? Who else has the power? Who else has the wisdom? Who else can be trusted?
I sow, and once I’ve exhausted my bag down to its acorns and nuts, I answer, my voice soft. “No-one but I. No-one else has the strength … for now. Few others have the wisdom. And ... and, well, I believe nearly anyone else could be trusted more than I.”
Daybreaker hisses. Why on earth—
“You know what I want,” I reply, as the rain comes drumming down, blurring the black world beyond any possible sight beyond my bubble. “Of course you do. How could I not know what I feel, what I want deep-down?”
And in the blackness beyond, familiar shapes take form. A trick of a distracted mind, and they are quickly gone.
But they did beguile.
“But I also think,” I quietly reply. “And I watched what happened. And I learned. And I know what you offer and what you would truly take, and it would never end at Harmony for all the world. Or at darkness harried into the light. For all I’d lie to myself. We would always find new darkness, the hunt would consume us, and we’d turn up rocks and split the world to its heart — to its heart,” the snarl comes out inadvertently, “and we’d know no peace, and the world would know none in turn! None at all.”
Then let it know none, so that we may work unfettered. A small price. And we wouldn’t even regret it in the end. You would relish it. You know that.
The alicorn magic seems to murmur in sympathy with Daybreaker. She came with it, and their resonance runs deep. In time I’ll unearth why.
In the distant fog of memory, a farmpony stands, white-hided and pink-maned under the permanent coating of dirt. She is young — too young for her labour, and for all that lay before her — and she looks tired.
In the times before, before I donned the mantle of alicornhood, I was an earth pony. My tribe’s arts were my first arts, and mighty though I may be with the blessings of the other tribes … with my first calling, well.
Never mind our strength. Never mind our doughtiness. Our foremost gift is this: we bring life where it is needed, and make meadows where we find deserts.
I slam my hoof into the ground. And an alicorn’s worth of earth pony magic thunders across the world.
Nearby seeds murmur to themselves in the sodden dust, cracking open, roots spreading forth. They find water and the nourishment that they need in my magic, and they grow. Their roots spear out into the soil, coiling out with all the speed and vigour that an alicorn’s might affords them, entangling with one another and clumping the new soil together. I will them on, sinking in more magic, and their roots stab down deeper and their green shoots pierce up through the surface.
Grass and flowers and hardy cereals for now, a mixture of all sorts to lend the earth vitality and strength. And as their small steps spread out around me, drunk on my magic and the water from on high, I feel their collective might take hold of the new earth, giving the topsoil a firmness that might have taken decades if not centuries to achieve.
From across the span of centuries, the farmpony looks at my labours with approval.
Your own dark impulses can see you lose your grounding. But your own self can keep you stable. Keep your gaze on ponies, and fertile fields, and all the little details.
The soil needs to keep its new stability. I draw out the first several acorns and resume sowing.
Fool, Daybreaker whispers. You delay the inevitable. There will come a day where you find your resources exhausted. Where I and the power I promise are all that can save you and your precious little details. And that day, I promise you … you will wish you’d called upon me sooner.
I nod, wearily. “But not today,” I reply, and whatever answer she gives, I inadvertently drown out by exerting my magic upon the acorns in the topsoil. They demand more effort. But their roots go deeper. They hold the world together. And as the saplings spring up from the new grass and sink their roots down through the new soil, I find my work nearing completion.
I stretch my wings out once again, feeling for the weather, for that weathercrafting knack I’ve come to regard as natural, stretching till I feel all the thrumming power of the storm overhead about my pinions. And I bring my wings together again.
The thunderclap echoes through the sky, and a moment later, the rain diminishes. Not gone, not entirely. A faint drizzle comes down. Enough to get dampened by, enough to keep the new soil moist and the plants fed. Just enough. I fold my wings, disperse my bubble, and relish the water pattering on my hide. Rain’s always helped me relax, helped me sleep. And the toll of my exertions coupled with the downpour make me briefly tempted to nap, here and now.
But my job’s not yet done. One of the growing trees finds the brunt of my magic upon it, and hollow spaces open and grow throughout its trunk. A warren within the living wood, fit for habitation.
I draw out the little box from my saddlebags, open it gently, and whisper wakefulness into it. Inside, its passengers stir to life. A bee queen and a multitude of her workers, freshly conscripted from the hives in my gardens.
The queen totters to her little legs first, flaps her wings, and her compound eyes seem to give me an annoyed look. Fellow monarchs ought not to trap one another in boxes, her line of thought presumably goes.
“You know your own business,” I say, and huff on her back. She buzzes and takes flight through the spitting rain, her bemused workers falling into formation behind her. She makes for the hollowed tree. A good home for any hive.
Around me, greenery and flowers rush to the horizons, digging their roots deep and cementing the barren land, holding the water tight. My seeds may be exhausted, but what’s established is keen to propagate, and my magic helps them along. Amidst them, across the plains and over the ridges, more saplings soar skywards, young and eager. Around them, flowers grow, and once the hive is settled, they’ll do their own work.
In time, once it’s ready, ponies will know of this land. I’ll see their first expeditions. I’ll see them settle and grow. I’ll see them prosper, generation building upon generation. Where I found a desert, I made plenty and peace. Let that be my guiding light rather than the world ablaze.
And where a flame cannot be extinguished—
And I never shall.
—I’ll endure instead. I’ve done it so far. I’ll do so again, and again, and however many agains it takes.
I groan with satisfaction, slump to my haunches, kick off my shoes, and draw out my packed lunch, a thermos of tea and a sandwich. A far cry from court cuisine, but what my court doesn’t know shan’t hurt it.
One flourish of a wing draws back the black clouds, letting sunbeams roam the once-dark country, gold breaking through the high and distant black and burnishing the world. I look to my sun, its light feeding the greenery underhoof in the wake of my own magic, smile, and sip my tea.
Let others kindle their torches.
I plant my gardens.
